A Blast From the Past

I love restoring old things so they don't end up in dumpster somewhere.  But when I found this old radio I thought I hit the jackpot for my hubby.  He loves old radio's and juke boxes, really anything thats old and is associated with music.  I loved the look of the cabinet and was hoping that he would be able to restore the electrical part of this radio/record player.

Wires were hanging out every where and most of them looked like they had been chewed into by... something?  When Doug looked at it he tried several things in hopes of being able to restore it but it was really broken.  There were tubes broken and pieces missing, not to mention the scary wiring again. 

The speaker was completely blown and the record player wasn't any better off.  The poor thing had seen much happier times, I'm sure.  We hated to do it, but we decided to gut it or it would end up in a dumpster somewhere.  At least we could save the cabinet.  Doug did save all of the radio and record player parts, he just couldn't throw out something so cool. 

So the reconstruction started, and what a job it was.  Doug helped me on most of this part, which I was very thankful for.  I could have done it but he is so fast at it, maybe because he is a contractor!

Here I have already sanded and stained the top, which the wood on the top was beautiful.  I sprayed a primer on the rest and am ready to paint, but what color should it be? 

 

It was kind of boxy looking so we decided to take the jig saw to the bottom of it.  Doug gave it a great new style on the bottom.  Notice the picture above and the after picture below.

The inside became a cabinet with a lot of nice shelves.  I then painted it Graycon, one of my favorite colors.  It's kind of a aqua/green, but really pretty.

The outside I finished in Swiss Coffee. The stain color for the top is dark walnut, and then I used about four coats of rub on poly to seal the top and one coat to seal the rest of the piece.

Ta Daaaaa!  I loved being able to at least save the beautiful cabinet.  It would have met up with the dumpster soon in the condition it was in.  The aqua/green is such an inviting color and adds so much charm to this old piece.  Now it has a whole new purpose and will be used for years to come.

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Retro Meet Shabby

My daughter spotted this dresser and another one at a yard sale and grabbed them for me.  Both of them are retro style, which isn't my favorite style but I thought I would try something new.  The first dresser I painted took forever to sell so I decided to change the retro look of this one a little bit.  I had the hubby attach some moulding around the top edges to take away the sharp rectangular boxy  look.  I wanted to soften the top up a bit and adding the molding did the trick.

                                      

Cleaning the dresser up and sanding it was the first time I really took a good look at it.  The drawers all worked great, and the inside of them were so clean.  I've had a really long run of dressers that the drawers are messed up and many of them are so filthy, so this was a nice change.  The curves on the bottom drawers were so cool, it gave it a really unique look. The handles were pretty neat looking too so I definitely wanted to reuse them.

                                                

                               I scuffed up the Formica top and painted it with ASCP in Graphite.

  The body I painted in Swiss coffee and distressed lightly.  Doesn't it look like a completely different dresser?

                                    

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Sandi